


Felix Culpa

by AMarguerite



Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault
Genre: Friendship, Gen, M/M, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-19
Updated: 2016-04-19
Packaged: 2018-06-03 04:04:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6595903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AMarguerite/pseuds/AMarguerite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Sandy tried, kindly but confusingly, to sketch out the network of various friends, acquaintances, and what seemed like arch-enemies that lead to the story of “That Time a Quaker Punched Bunny In the Face,” becoming more popular among a certain section of the Bridstow population than <i>The Wizard of Oz</i>."</p><p>Or, "Andrew Raynes has a most enlightening discussion with Sandy Reid during the North African Campaign."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Felix Culpa

Whatever classical notions Andrew once had of Egypt had disintegrated into the sort of horrible mud made from sand and blood that sooner or later coated every part of his uniform. Farewell forever, the pure white marble columns, touched by moonlight. They belonged to a past that had perhaps never existed.

Andrew had begun, however unconsciously, to link that realization to the book Laurie had given him. He spent more time contemplating it as an object than reading its text. He started at the dried splotches of sea spray and blood, absently comparing it to the stains on his own clothes. They brought a curious sort of comfort. Andrew could feel close to Laurie by this now shared experience of suffering, these horrible messes that stained and disfigured all the neat, black and white classical ideals brought out of school and unconsciously carried around.  

Andrew consciously carried the book everywhere, like a talisman, or (as he thought when he was feeling foolish and irritated with himself) like a child will carry around a special toy or bit of blanket for comfort. An especial thing that seems precious because of the love imbued in the giving, and not for any other reason.

He almost cradled it in the crook of his right arm as he lay on a gurney, blood pumping from his left, and stared at all the loops in ‘Odell.’ Laurie’s handwriting was pleasant to look at, a round and flowing cursive, even when written in haste. It was easy for Andrew to lose himself in the safely inked circles, to forget where he was, to forget how awful he felt, to forget how the book had come to him. There was only Laurie’s name, familiar and without sharp-edges, and then his own, written with the same pleasant softness.

“That book’s been through hell, hasn’t it?” asked one of the nurses, cheerfully getting on a gurney herself.

“Yes, I had it since I started doing ambulance work during the Blitz,” said Andrew, quickly shutting it.

“Remarkable it’s survived as it has, then,” she said. The nurse’s name escaped him momentarily. She was rather young, possibly his own age, with a wide, round face that made her look younger. “Smart of you to bring a book. It’s always so dull, giving blood. You’re one of the ambulance drivers, is that right? A Quaker?”

“That’s right,” he said, putting the book to the side, balanced near the edge of the gurney. “Andrew Raynes. I’d shake your hand, but--”

She laughed as she rolled up her sleeve. “Yes, you’re tethered there, aren’t you? I’m Nurse Fairby. I usually assist Captain Reid in the surgery. I think you’ve passed on men to me before, when triage and surgery get mixed up, or when the cases are bad enough to come immediately to the operating theatre.”

Andrew allowed that this was possibly so. He rested the fingers of his right hand on the cover of the book, absently stroking the title stamped into the leather.

“How’s it going then, duckie?” asked Nurse Beddoe, coming in with all the bits of tubing and plastic necessary to collect the blood. She was a comfortable, middle-aged woman, who liked to boss the patients and mother the nurses and orderlies. Her attitude made a pleasant change. “Yes, looking fine. You’re halfway there. And what have we here? Nurse Fairby, out of surgery?”

“And hopefully not covered in blood,” she replied, chipperly. “If I am, there’s a problem.”

“Yes, _my_ problem. Let’s get you set up.”

“Shouldn’t take long. I’m an old hand at this. Sleeve up, fist clenched--”

“I can see you are.” Nurse Beddoe smiled as she got set up. “You and Raynes both. He even brings a book! Still working on the same one, duckie?”

“Yes,” said Andrew, trying to match the general level of cheerful good-humor. “Not much time for reading, I’m afraid. I haven’t yet got to the end.”

“What are you reading?” asked Nurse Fairby, watching critically as the needle slid into her arm.

“ _The Phaedrus_ of Plato.”

A rather sunburnt doctor, otherwise as uncannily pale as only the Scots could be, walked in at that and looked curiously at Andrew.

“Young man like you ought to be at university, in the normal course of things,” said Nurse Beddoe, sparing a glance from the blood bag. “I am glad to see you’re still keeping up with your Greek-- yes, Captain Reid? Can’t you spare Dottie? I’ve only just got her hooked up.”

The doctor looked away from Andrew. “If you have, I suppose I must. I had a free moment; I was hoping to see what we could do with Lance-Corporal Post’s right hand, now he’s had three days’ recovery time from the first surgery.”

Nurse Fairby clucked her tongue. “I don’t know if anything _can_ be done. I mean, more than we’ve done already.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Captain Reid. “I’m hopeful. I had a friend in Bridstow whose hand seemed past saving after Dunkirk, and they still salvaged two-and-a-half fingers. They gave him the command of an armed trawler somewhere in the Atlantic.”

Andrew gave a somewhat involuntary jerk and, in his haste to make sure he hadn’t pulled the needle out of his arm, knocked his book to the floor. Captain Reid bent to pick it up and absently, almost automatically, glanced at the title page. “Raynes, is it?” he said politely, giving back the book.

“Yes,” said Andrew, almost curt. But then Captain Reid got sucked into some sort of very technical discussion about degrees of flexion and Andrew laid back, clenching and unclenching his left hand, to make the blood flow faster, and cradling his book against his chest.

He could not drive from his mind all those horrible, drawled insinuations, the look of shock on the strikingly handsome face, the slightly bloody smile after Andrew had punched him--

‘How could Laurie love that man?’ Andrew wondered, squeezing his eyes shut against the addendum he could not bear to acknowledge: ‘how could he love that man over _me_?’

Instead he thought, ‘Dave said it was true, that Laurie couldn’t deny to any of those horrible things-- at least Laurie didn’t love me like _that_.’ Then came the usual line of thought-- had Laurie been bullied into it, in school, and fallen right back into it, meeting R.R. Lanyon again all those years? The littlier boys at school had been terrified into it, too terrified to try and get out of it, and one or two of them, even in the end, had developed an odd sort of loyalty--

Andrew felt a sudden frisson of anguished self-hatred. How could he have been so cowardly as to abandon Laurie, if this was the case? To never send any of the half-dozen letters he’d started but never finished all over England and North Africa-- how could he have contented himself with only Dave as an intermediary--

\--but was it cowardice? Or was it just, as Dave had framed it, the only possible moral choice?

Had he really made the moral choice?

Andrew had thought so when he’d joined the Friends’ Ambulance Service, but now, as always when his reserves were low, he descended into agonies of doubt.

He at least recognized the feelings now. Donating blood always made him feel depressed and unhappy. “Nurse Beddoe?”

“Needle pinching, feeling faint, or blood sugar tanking, duckie?”

“The last one.”

“One cup of tea with plenty of sugar, coming right up! Nurse Fairby, Captain Reid, can I get you anything?”

The tea helped, and Andrew put Laurie out of his mind, or attempted to. It was difficult to do when Captain Reid said, after the blood bag was full, “Careful there Raynes, you look properly done up. Let me give you a hand back to your tent. Does giving blood always take you like that?”

“Yes, but it’s necessary,” said Andrew, wincing a little as Nurse Beddoe pulled the needle from his arm.

“Careful you don’t give too much of yourself,” said Captain Reid. “Now where--”

“Don’t let me put you out,” said Andrew, quickly. “I’ve never fainted or anything from it. I feel fine. Well,” he amended, at Nurse Beddoe’s tutting, “a little drained, and a bit dizzy, but nothing to signify.”

“Well, with Nurse Fairby like this, I can’t look in on Lance-Corporal Post.” He sighed, a little campily. “There’s my afternoon in ruins.”

“Yes, shattered beyond repair,” agreed Nurse Fairby. “Oh do let him, Raynes. Captain Reid must always be helping someone.”

Andrew uncertainly agreed. He didn’t bother rolling down his shirt sleeves or putting on his jacket. It was far too hot and, at any rate, he always liked to be able to touch the bit of gauze and surgical tape on his inner left forearm, to remind himself that it was over, and he need not feel so drained for a few weeks more, at least. He tucked his book firmly under his arm.

“You know,” said Captain Reid, when they were alone on the walkway, “we have an acquaintance in common.”

Andrew stiffened, preparing himself for the blow. “Oh?”

“Yes, Spud Odell.”

The tension drained out of him so suddenly he felt weak. “Oh, you know Laurie?”

“Yes, decently well,” said Captain Reid, catching Andrew's arm. “Come sit for a moment. It’s this awful heat after donating blood, I imagine.”

Andrew had been wobbling alarmingly. It was with relief he allowed himself to be whisked away to the shade of a tent-- probably Captain Reid’s, given the non-army-regulation tartan tossed over one of the beds-- and to be sat in a camp chair, and given a cup of water. “Thank you, Captain Reid.”

Away from the society of the nurses, and safe within the confines of his own space, Captain Reid seemed inclined to leave aside his professional manner. “Oh, call me Sandy, do.”

“Er, yes. Alright. My name’s Andrew.”

“Yes, I know,” said Sandy, absently. “I’ve a little scotch left. Eighteenth century course of treatment, really, but it might do you some good--”

“No thanks,” said Andrew.

“Oh, do your people not drink?” He looked faintly embarrassed. “I’m sorry, I grew up in a manse. Scottish Presbyterians have such near-constant schisms we scarcely can agree on our own religious practices, let alone pay attention to anyone else’s.”

“It’s left up to the individual,” said Andrew, “but I don’t drink, not often. How-- how did you know my name?” Then, feeling stupid. “Oh, the inscription in the book, I imagine.”

“Well yes, and Spud-- Laurie, that is. He’s mentioned you.” Then, delicately, “I do write to Laurie, you know. It started as a sort of mutual obligation foisted on us by our friendships to a set of... well, I suppose the best thing to say is that they used to know each other rather a lot better than they do now, and are still each others’ _people_ . Laurie and I are certainly better correspondents than we were friends. Though that _was_ partly my fault-- and mostly Alec’s-- but you don’t know Alec, do you? Well, Laurie and I write pleasant notes to each other now.”

Andrew had no idea what to do with this tortured and rather baffling history of the Reid-Odell detente.

Sandy sat down on the tidily made bed and glanced at the messy one, on the other side. “Captain Wyndham will be in surgery for a few hours yet. Advanced case of appendicitis. Really rather a relief, after all the battlefield injuries one sees.”

This was all still perfectly bewildering. Andrew supposed his expression said as much, for Sandy sighed and said, “My _dear_ , I only meant that we won’t be interrupted. You can let your hair down.”

“What?”

Sandy looked equally puzzled. “Well, we are-- you know. I’m quite safe.”

From what?

“Congratulations?” Andrew ventured.

“No, no,” said Sandy, patiently. “I know Laurie. You know Laurie.”

“Yes, I got that,” said Andrew.

“I don’t think you quite do, my dear.” Sandy made a vinegar face. “Goodness, I thought I’d dropped enough hairpins.”

Andrew could not hide his blank bewilderment.

Sandy sighed and said, “No wonder Alec said Ralph said Laurie was in such torments. I don’t know how you managed to keep so innocent. You didn’t follow any of what I just said, did you?”

“No,” Andrew admitted.

“Do you know....” Then, delicately, glancing outside the open flap to the tent, to make sure no one was coming. “You do know about yourself, don’t you?”

This was beginning to be irritating. “I really don’t follow you. Please just come out and say what you mean. I’m not someone who needs to have blinders put on. People are always keeping things from me, thinking I won’t understand-- or that I just somehow _will_ understand, without any further explanations--” the old, frustrated question, ‘how _was_ my friendship with Laurie dangerous, Dave?’ rose to his mind “--but it all just ends up with me in a muddle.”

Sandy propped his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands. “Oh yes, I know that feeling. I often wished I had someone to explain things to me when I first--” He trailed off. His light, almost white eyebrows met over the bridge of his nose. “Well, I mean. Laurie Odell was in love with you, and he rather thought you returned his feelings. That’s the assumption I was working with, dragging you off to have a chat like this.”

Everything clicked, suddenly, like a key fitting into a locked door that had been long ignored because there was no known way of opening it. “Oh.”

“Sorry, was that a bit much? We can backtrack to--”

“No, it’s fine,” said Andrew. ‘So _that_ was the danger,’ he thought. He felt as if he had been struck by falling debris and was now pinioned there. He was at a total loss of what to do or say.

“Didn’t he ever tell you?” asked Sandy, with a soft kindness. His tone was like being bundled in cashmere. “I’m very sorry. He ought to have done. I can tell it would have meant the world to you.”

“He-- not in so many words.” Andrew looked at the familiar, stained cover of _The Phaedrus_ . Abruptly he said, “He kissed me. It was my first. Kiss, I mean. We never talked about it, really. I didn’t know how to bring it up again.” He set down his cup of water and rubbed his face with his hands, as if trying to get at his brain and wash it free of over a year's worth of confusion. “And I--” Wretchedly, he said, “Why didn’t I _realize_? I knew people weren’t-- I knew something was off. The way I felt about-- when he left, I mean. When he was transferred out of the EMS hospital. I knew I wasn't behaving sensibly. I spouted an awful lot of nonsense about how I felt as if I could tell him anything and wasn't that odd, and understanding how Dave felt, losing his wife, and--” he swallowed. “I just-- I just thought I was fond of him.”

“Well, you were,” said Sandy, still very kindly. “Among other things. But you understand what I mean now, that I'm safe? I'm like you.”

“You were in love with Laurie?” He knew this was wrong even before he said it, but there was a desperate drive to _know_ that could only express itself confusedly.

“Heavens, no! Not in the _least_ my type. And if been sharing digs with my, ah, my boyfriend for over a year when I met him. I just mean that I-- that I'm a homosexual, if you like the scientific term, and a queer, if you don't.”

And that, thought Andrew, is what I am too. He wanted desperately to walk, but even standing up seemed an impossible task. ‘Why did no one tell me,’ he wondered. ‘Everyone must have known.’

“ _I_ must have always known,” said Andrew. “I don't know why I didn't think of it before. I suppose I didn't want to.”

“It's not an easy thing to accept,” said Sandy. He gave a little gasp, “Oh Lord, and you don't know, do you?”

“What specifically?”

“That the man you punched at an EMS Hospital in Bridstow back in 1940 was not actually Ralph Lanyon?”

Andrew clutched convulsively at his book. He had forgotten Sandy knew Lieutenant-- possibly now Captain-- Lanyon. “How-- how did you-- Laurie didn’t--”

“No, no,” Sandy hastened to say. “Laurie didn’t tell me. Toto Phelps did and that’s... oh dear. This is going to be dreadfully complicated.” Sandy tried, kindly but confusingly, to sketch out the network of various friends, acquaintances, and what seemed like arch-enemies that lead to the story of “That Time a Quaker Punched Bunny In the Face,” becoming more popular among a certain section of the Bridstow population than _The Wizard of Oz._

“Wait, so,” Andrew said, trying to sort it all out. “I punched a man named Bunny?”

“Well, Lieutenant Wilfred, technically. People called him ‘Bunny’ after that _Daily Mirror_ cartoon. You know, with the little rabbit named Wilfred.”

“Yes, I do, but I punched _him_. Bunny. Lieutenant Wilfred.”

“Yes.”

“And not R. R. Lanyon.”

“Yes. I don’t think you ever even met Ralph. I don’t think you could even have gotten a good idea of Ralph from Bunny’s impression.”

“Why?”

“Well Ralph’s rather butch and Bunny is--”

“No, not that,” interrupted Andrew, really wishing he hadn’t started in on this conversation after giving blood. He felt horribly drained already. “Why did Bunny impersonate Ralph?”

“Er, that’s the problem with Bunny. He comes up with these things on the spur of the moment. I suppose it seemed like the best idea to him at the time. Or the cruelest.” Sandy considered it. “Cruelest and best. That’s rather Bunny for you, isn’t it? He laughed about it, Toto said. It really was the most absurd thing, the way Toto told it-- Bunny _would_ be--” he made a limp-wristed gesture, and said, with a rather camp emphasis “-- _provoking enough_ a conscientious objector gave him a black eye. Bunny can’t help what he likes, I suppose, or being what he is. Probably had a very unhappy childhood or something.”

It is always disconcerting to realize one's deepest moment of pathos is bathos to everyone else. One is apt to feel as if some fundamental truth of the universe has been disproved.

Andrew tried to break this unpalatable realization, as best he could, into digestible form. “So if I followed you correctly, the ex-boyfriend of the boyfriend of the man who was almost my boyfriend decided to impersonate _his_ ex-boyfriend, for unclear and psychologically messy reasons.”

“Not _unclear_ ,” said Sandy, helpfully. “He wanted to ruin things for Ralph. The ex. Though... hang on.”

“Shall we draw a diagram?” Andrew asked, feeling as if he had drifted away from a land where everything was sensible and rational, and into some kind of surrealist painting full of rhinoceri and melting clocks.

“No, no,” said Sandy, patiently. “You asked if he was Ralph Lanyon, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“So,” said Sandy, with a painstaking fastidiousness that he had used while discussing degrees of flexion, “Bunny saw at once that you could be made to be jealous. So he said everything he could to make you so. But I think _he_ thought you would react the way he would by just... you know, getting catty and jealous. I don’t think it ever occurred to him that you would punch him.”

“It didn’t occur to me either, until I did it.” Andrew wanted to be moving but didn't know what to do. For lack of anything better, he flipped open his book. “But I feel-- it all seems so-- I just don't understand. It's clear I didn't at the time-- understand I mean-- but I'm older now. I ought to understand. But I don't. Why did Bunny do it? I mean, to get back at Lanyon-- Ralph, I mean. But what did he expect would happen after?”

“Ralph broke one of his ribs or something,” said Sandy. “I don't think Bunny expected that either.”

“What _did_ he expect?”

“I suppose Bunny just wanted Ralph back. Toto thought as much, at least. And if Laurie broke off with Ralph in a rage about the two of you fighting, Ralph would be at such a low ebb Bunny could lure him back again. He only ever managed to get Ralph the first time because Ralph had just lost half his hand, and thought Laurie had died of wounds, and was nearly suicidally depressed, Alec says.” This last was said a little jealously. Sandy clearly did not like that Alec had said it. “So there. That's what it boils down to. Bunny wanted Ralph.”

‘And I wanted Laurie,’ thought Andrew, but he said nothing, just looked blankly at the space between his name and Laurie’s, on the flyleaf of _The Phaedrus_. “I suppose,” said Andrew, instead, “that one wishes not to be alone, even in feeling something, after a break-up.”

Sandy said, solicitously, “My dear--”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Andrew, quickly. “That was-- I was talking nonsense again. I didn't-- it-- it wasn’t anything.”

“Wasn’t it?” asked Sandy. It was a tone that could be construed as gossipy, if Andrew hadn’t caught the note of false brashness, which anxious, insecure people sometimes threw up, for fear of being too exposed before someone whose judgments they valued.

“I didn’t know well enough for it to be... anything,” said Andrew, after a moment’s silent thought. “Or if it was something I certainly didn’t recognize it at the time, and Laurie-- Laurie didn’t want to tell me.”

“No, he wouldn’t.” Sandy dropped his gaze and looked out the flap at the dusty line of tents, at the muddied wooden walkways, at the detritus of field hospitals, at the sleeping lumps of jeeps and ambulances. “He minded, you know. He minded dreadfully, what he was. One could tell. It irritated me beyond reason sometimes. It always irritates me when I see it. It’s horribly unfair of me. But I can’t quite seem to stop it.” He became aware he had wandered away from what Andrew chiefly wished to know and brought himself back to it with a sigh. “Laurie's rather better about it now he's with-- er--” then veering swiftly away from these dangerous conversational shoals “-- yes, well, in general it's not a fair thing of me to feel. It can be rather a chore, having... what was it Alec used to call it? Having the whole of your emotional life... hidden away. Made sordid and awfully nasty by people who don’t _know_ , and who put it on the same plane as child molestation or prostitution. Having to always go through the same sort of silly dance to try and find out if anyone else shares your special interests, as it were, and never entirely being sure if you’re about to find a friend or a blackmailer.”

“Were you taking an awful risk, talking to me?” Andrew asked, a little startled.

“Oh no,” said Sandy, soothingly. “That's why I asked if you knew Laurie. If you _know_ someone who knows someone it's all much easier.”

Andrew didn't find it easy in the least. He let the book fall to the ground and, leaning his elbows on his knees, clutched his head in his hands.

He was vaguely aware of movement, then the absence of sunlight. He was relieved by it, though the closing of the tent flap made the air stuffy and close.

“Oh my dear,” said Sandy kindly, putting an arm around him. “It's very hard, I know. But it is better _to_ know, isn't it?”

Andrew thought of the apple orchard where he and Laurie had first really talked, their exile from the garden, the long meetings in Limbo. He had taken the apple, had he not? He tried to push back the welter of feelings, pressing the palms of his hands into his eyes, as if to force his eyes into seeing it again.

“Don’t take it too seriously,” said Sandy, kindly. “I used to and it--” He pulled away a little; Andrew looked up and saw Sandy pulling on the sleeve of his shirt, as if to cover his wrist. “It can really wear on you, all the _drama_ of people not speaking plainly to each other. And it’s difficult to improve, given that plain speaking can land you in prison.” He looked worriedly at Andrew. “Are you alright, my dear? I do rather feel as if I’ve caused a fall from where you sat in happy ignorance.”

“It wasn’t happy,” said Andrew, after a moment. He felt too tired to take everything in and could only think, in one of those absurd thrills of exhaustion, ‘Yes I did. I took the winesaps and their flesh was stained crimson from their skins. Laurie even called it Limbo, when we were exiled from the apple orchard. How stupid I am.’ “I’m not... I don’t think I’m the sort of person that can be happy when I’m not... clear on things. I took the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. I wish I’d had the courage to-- to eat it then.”

“You mustn’t think of it as exile from the Garden of Eden,” said Sandy, worriedly, pulling up the other camp chair to sit beside him. “I suppose I gave you rather a bad picture of it all just now, but there are some really decent people who are like us. It is possible to have friends who really _do_ understand you.”

Andrew didn’t say anything, lost, in a sense memory of the autumn leaves landing in his hair, and Laurie lighting a cigarette and handing it over, the realization that it had been almost a kiss, putting his lips to the cigarette that had just been between Laurie’s.

Sandy said, softly. “I hope you’ll let _me_ be a friend to you.”

In a strange way, the memory let Andrew look outside of the situation in which he now found himself and he realized, ‘Sandy’s trying to make himself into the person he needed when he first realized what he was.’ He was touched by this, and Andrew knew himself too well now to deny that the idea of doing a kindness to Sandy, by letting Sandy be the person he wanted to be, gave him a sense of profound relief. Andrew would not be forever indebted for this knowledge. They might talk with each other on terms of equality.

And Sandy wouldn’t hide things. Not like Dave. Or-- and it hurt to think of this-- like Laurie.

“Yes,” said Andrew. “If you can do with me.”

“Of course,” said Sandy, looking relieved. “The hardest part to get over is thinking you’re quite alone--” Andrew remembered walking by himself in the cold, in the country lanes, with the leaves crisped and sere, frightening himself with the thought he might never see Laurie again “-- but really, you aren’t. It’s not... easy, per say, to find one’s group, but it gets easier.” Sandy lowered his eyes. His eyelashes were almost white against his sunburned face. “And I don’t mind telling you, it’s a relief to _me_ to know I’m not alone here. There wasn’t anyone else around I felt sure of. It feels awfully less like being cast out to wander the earth now.”

“Adam left Eden knowing God was with him,” said Andrew. “According to Milton, anyway. I always liked that line. It was almost something you’d hear in the Friends. Everyone has their Inner Light that doesn’t leave them.”

“That does sound pleasant,” said Sandy, in the polite tones of someone who didn’t really believe what was being told him. After a moment, he said, rather anxiously, “But all this Biblical talk is reminding me of the manse, and all the generations of Reids quite obsessed with sin. I hope-- I hope that I haven’t ruined things for you. I should hate to be the snake in the Garden--”

“No, no, _felix culpa_ ,” said Andrew, things gradually becoming clearer. His memories, even, began to take on shades he had not then noticed or understood. Everything made so much sense: Dave’s worry over him, that strong, passionate desire to be near and ever near Laurie, that sense of having always been somehow different. “Light out of darkness! Full of doubt I stand;/ Whether I should repent me now of sin/ By me done and occasioned, or rejoice--”

Sandy said, screwing his eyes shut, as if to aid his memory, “Or rejoice... much more, that much more good thereof shall spring.”  
  



End file.
